Bates Motel: “Persuasion”
(Episode 3.03)

After last week’s search for missing prostitute Annika, Bates Motel is very smart to start this week by questioning what we assumed: that Norman killed her, or at the very least that she’s dead already. Last season, we had the investigation over the death of Blair Watson, which was Norman’s fault, and with Annika missing, the show risked taking similar steps (almost as if every season would have a new dead woman on Norman’s conscience).
What “Persuasion” does though is takes us through the steps of this search, but it take opposite approach from we saw last season. Norman now has more power than Norma and he’s able to lie to himself enough so that answering some questions from Sheriff Romero is no big deal, even if it is because he doesn’t have quite as much to hide as we originally thought. “Persuasion” gives us a Norman that is no longer under the control of his mother, and that’s a terrifying concept.
In “Persuasion,” Norma worries that her son might have killed another woman who wrongly trusted Norman too much. Even after going to the morgue and seeing that the body the police found last week isn’t Annika’s she still looks at her son with a nervous, uncertain glare. While she loves her son—maybe too much—she now knows that he’s capable of murder, as well as something that may be even worse for her—lying to his mother.
Freddie Highmore is particularly fantastic in this episode as we see him trying to deal with his mother’s distrust. But we see his reaction to this not as a murderer who might be losing his mind, but as a confused teenager that doesn’t know what to do when the person he loves the most doesn’t trust him. He can’t control his rage, but once again, not in the same way as Norman when he is about to murder someone. That side of Norman is terrifyingly calm and collected; this Norman can’t control his actions in any way.
Norma does have it pretty rough this week, especially since we see her at her happiest when she identifies a dead girl at the morgue, confirming that she’s not Annika. This episode give us Norma puking on herself (offscreen thankfully), getting in a huge fight with her son, making a fool of herself on her first day at school and eventually finding a dying Annika.